The October Killings (28 page)

*   *   *

In his office near the only gate of the prison, psychologist Patrick Lesela was doing his paperwork. In the short time he had been at the prison, Lesela had impressed everyone with his attention to detail. He had made himself aware of every aspect of the way the prison operated. He was often seen walking the prison's corridors, filling one notebook after another with his observations. His activities were so thorough that on one occasion a senior warder had laid a complaint about him. “I am simply immersing myself in the working of the prison so that I can be more useful,” he had told the prison's head warder.

While, according to the plan devised by Commissioner Joshua Setlaba of Correctional Services, Yudel would be driving the program nationally, Lesela would be in charge of the local prisons. It had been a surprise to Yudel when, the day after he met Lesela, he had tried to discuss the program with him, only to find that he had not yet read through it. “I have been too busy with routine tasks,” Lesela had said.

“Routine tasks are not more important than this,” Yudel had told him.

“I will start it immediately,” Lesela had said. But he had still not opened the file. It lay unread in the top drawer of his desk. He did not anticipate the need ever to read it.

*   *   *

Sergeant William Tshabalala had, at thirty-two, moved up quickly after starting as an ordinary constable eight years earlier. He was happy with his progress in the force, but living off his salary was not easy. Fortunately, his wife was also an earner. She, like her husband, was a conscientious worker and she too had moved up from being a supermarket shelf-packer to her present position as credit controller for an engineering company. Between them they had been able to afford a modest suburban home and so get their two sons and a daughter away from the violence of the township in which they had both grown up. With careful budgeting, they had also been able to afford a decent suburban school for their children, and the car he was now driving on his way to work.

In recent years, an exodus of skilled policemen to private security companies had meant long shifts for those who had remained. Tshabalala did not expect relief much before midnight.

On the other hand, most days were quiet in the Tshwane West police station. At most, the cells would hold a few drunks from the night before and they could now be released. He would be the senior man on duty. If luck was on his side, he would have time to read the papers and to work on the plan he was trying to develop for the extra bedroom he would build himself, buying used materials from a demolisher as he needed them. As a child, he and six siblings had slept in the living room of the tiny low-cost house that had been home to five adults and seven children. The extra bedroom he was planning would give each of his children a separate bedroom. He was determined that they were not going to grow up with the deprivations that had been part of his early years.

Planning had always been important to William Tshabalala. Since he was a child he had been thinking about ways to advance in life. The addition to his home of an extra bedroom was only a small part of his planning. The day would come, he was sure, when he would be ready to start his own security company. That was a long-term plan though. But, he told himself, if he continued to work hard and plan, it was achievable.

34

Abigail had spent most of the morning listening first to Freek, and then to other officers interrogating Bishop. Every time Freek was relieved in the interrogation room, he had stayed in the office, listening to the efforts of the other officers. His eyes were red, his hair was uncombed and his skin was covered with a film of sweat.

He continued to follow the interrogation with complete concentration, watching for any response that could betray a weakness. By early afternoon, when Abigail left, he had still found none.

She made her way to the house in Muckleneuk, where Rosa let her in. The dark eyes of the older woman were even darker now, a reflection of the anger within. “I told Yudel to go back there to tell Freek what to do,” she said to Abigail. “How can they let that monster get away with this?”

“I've just come from there. They've been interrogating him since midnight, more than twelve hours now.”

“Freek should thrash him.” Rosa's eyes flashed in indignation. “Freek should thrash him and thrash him and thrash him until he tells them where that man is.”

“Yudel told you about it?”

“Not everything. He never tells me everything. But he told me enough to know that Freek should thrash him.”

Abigail found herself nodding. If only it had been that simple. “Yudel hasn't been there all morning.”

“He's in his study again, staring into space. He does that when he is faced with an insoluble problem. Sometimes he gets inspiration. Not always though. He told me he has a feeling about that place you took him to. I told him that this is not a time for feelings. This is a time for action. He said he doesn't know what action to take.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Go in, go in.” It was said with a brief, impatient shake of the head. “But afterward, you go back to the police station and tell Freek to thrash that monster.”

Abigail nodded again. Rosa was not in the mood for a rational discussion.

*   *   *

In the study, Yudel was sitting behind his desk, but side-on, leaning forward, his head in his hands. He was clearly deep in thought, so deep that he did not hear her enter. Yes, she thought. My friend, you are not a man of physical action.

She was almost upon him before he became aware of her. He rose suddenly to face her. If Freek looked tired, she thought, Yudel looked close to collapse. There was an agony in his eyes that went beyond physical weakness. “Yudel…” she said, but never got beyond his name. Looking at him, standing in the chaos of his study, without the jacket and tie he had worn to the
Samson
performance, he seemed to have more gray hair than the day before. She knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

There was something in his look that drove away the possibility of any secrets between them. He spent a long time, framing the sentence. “You came here to tell me about Ficksburg.”

“Yes.”

“Would you care to sit down?”

To Abigail, the circumstances made Yudel's politeness seem absurd. She almost responded that she would not mind if she did, thanks awfully. But she said, “I've left it too late.”

“Neither of us knows that. Tell me now.”

“I don't think there's anything there that will be helpful, but I'll tell you.”

“Everything?”

“Absolutely everything.” She sat down on the same chair she had occupied two days before. For a long moment she seemed to be struggling to find a place to start, then she began, not smoothly or effortlessly, but in uneven snatches of memory.

“Only six of us survived the Maseru raid. They took us across the border through a place where they had already cut the fence.

“Leon got into the armored vehicle I was put into and sat down next to me. I hardly remember anything of the drive to Ficksburg, but I do remember van Jaarsveld shouting at Leon in Afrikaans,
Ja, go with your black whore
.

“At the time I never even thought about what a serious thing it was for Leon to stand up to an officer the way he had, even pointing his gun at him. I had just seen my father killed and I knew what Leon had done and all I wanted was for Leon to hold me, but there were other soldiers in the vehicle. I don't know whether he would have held me if they had not been there, but I thought that he would have. I know how strange it sounds, but that is the way I felt.

“What do you want to know, Yudel? Tell me what you want to know.”

Only Abigail knew what she had to tell him, but he had to let her get there in her own way. “Where did they take you?”

“Ficksburg. The police station in Ficksburg.”

“And what did they do with you there?”

“They took us straight to the police cells. I never saw Leon, or van Jaarsveld either, after that. They didn't put us in cells with criminals. I suppose they thought we might influence them for the worse, and turn them into revolutionaries.

“The four women went into one cell and the two men who were still alive in another. The woman, Julia, the one I had been playing ball with earlier in the evening, had also survived.

“People have asked me if that was the longest night of my life, expecting me to say yes. But I don't think it was. I only remember bits of it. For me, the night may only have lasted an hour or it may have lasted a week. I have no clear memory of the passing of time or how I spent most of it.”

“They put you in the cells for the night?”

“Yes. At one point all four of us were clustered together with our arms around one another. I also remember being alone at times. The cell was big, designed for many prisoners, twenty or thirty perhaps, and there were times when we were scattered around it.

“There was a lavatory in the corner with a screen around it made from board. It was high enough to give some sort of privacy, but you could see the feet of the person using the lavatory. I know it's bizarre, but I still remember the feet.”

Abigail seemed to be struggling with the memory. Perhaps there was too much, or perhaps it had been suppressed for too long. “Was anything done to you there?” Yudel asked.

“Not by the police. The ordinary policemen in Ficksburg did not seem to be bad men. There was a white officer and two black constables. The white officer only glanced at us, then went back into the police station. The cells were in outbuildings in the police station yard, maybe twenty meters away from the main building. I suppose they didn't often have important prisoners in Ficksburg.

“I don't know if they thought of us as important. They had gone to enough trouble to attack our house, kill most of us and abduct the few survivors. Do you think they thought of us as important, Yudel?”

“I believe they did.”

“It seems so strange. I never thought of us as important.”

“But they kept you there that night?”

“Yes, and the next day. One of the two black policemen led us into the cells, then he unshackled us and locked us in without saying anything.

“It was the other one who made an impression on me though. I needed so for someone to be kind to me. Like Leon had been. And this man was. He was about fifty and his hair was gray in patches, rather like my father's. The night was hot and I remember him coming in a number of times with a jug of water. And every time the water had ice cubes floating in it. There must have been a refrigerator in the police station. But I'm sure ice was not usually offered to prisoners. It was a kind thing for him to do when you think how people like him were indoctrinated. We were communists and terrorists, as far as they were concerned. On one of his visits, he squeezed my shoulder and told me not to worry, that I was underage and they would have to try me as a juvenile. He was a good man and I remember the name he used was Jan. No doubt he had an African name, but during working hours he was Jan to both his colleagues and to the prisoners.”

Abigail again lapsed into a silence that seemed to have more to do with the jumble of recollections she was struggling with than her emotional state. “It happened long ago,” she said eventually. “I don't remember all of this part very well.”

“You were there the next day too?”

“It must have been the next day, because there was daylight from the windows and it was unbearably hot. The cells did not have ceilings and with the sun beating down, the corrugated iron roof must have been too hot to touch. The only air came in through the window, where I had seen the stars, and a small inspection hole set in the solid steel cell door at about my head height. But the inspection hole only gave you a view into a narrow passage that had gray, unpainted walls.

“They brought us food. There was meat, but it was gray and did not taste good, but there was enough for all of us and we ate it.

“Most of my memories of that day, the night before, and the one that followed, are vague. The way we were rescued is the only part of it that remains clear in my mind.”

She grabbed hold of Yudel's arm closest to her with both of her hands. “Michael Bishop was there. Isn't that enough?”

“No,” Yudel said. “Help me understand. I need to understand.”

When she started again, her voice was more even and the picture she was describing more composed. “I think it must have been close to midnight or even past midnight. I had not slept at all. The image of my father dying was all I could think about. From what I had seen it was not impossible that we would never get out of Ficksburg alive. I also thought about Leon. I thought about the way he had stood there pointing his gun at that ghastly man. It seemed to me that, although they were wearing the uniform of the oppressor, both Leon and Jan were on my side.

“I remember a drunkard singing. His sang terribly, stumbling from one key to another, singing the same line over and over. I even remember the line. It went, ‘Down to the bar room he staggered and fell down by the door.'

“At first it seemed to be coming from somewhere at the back of the cells and I thought that he must be another prisoner, but the sound moved past the cells toward the police station itself. He must have run into one of the policemen, because I heard one of them shout at him, saying that if he didn't shut up he would spend the night in the cells.

“He argued with the policeman, then I couldn't hear them anymore. I thought he must have been bundled into a cell, because everything went quiet. Later I heard him farther away, for a short time, then it was quiet again. I've often wondered who that man was and what he would think if he knew what was about to happen.

“I remember clearly how complete the silence was. There was nothing at all, not even the sound of a car, and no sound from the other cells. In our cell only Julia and myself were awake. The other two were both lying on their backs, breathing through their mouths.